Tag Archives: flight to opar

In November 2016, Éditions Mnémos will be publishing Opar, Intégrale, a French-language omnibus encompassing Hadon of Ancient Opar, Flight to Opar, and The Song of Kwasin. This is the first French collection of the original Khokarsa/Ancient Opar trilogy, and also marks the first translation into French of The Song of Kwasin, which I coauthored with Philip Jose Farmer. I don’t yet know who the cover artist is but I love the artwork!*

* Update: According to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, the cover artist is Grant Regan and the translator of The Song of Kwasin (Le Geste de Kwasin) is Laura Dupra. The translator of Hadon of Ancient Opar (Hadon, fils de l’antique Opar) and Flight to Opar (Fuite à Opar) is George H. Gallet.

I’ve been very fortunate to have Bob Eggleton illustrate a number of my books. The cover paintings for my duology of novellas set in Philip José Farmer’s Ancient Opar—Hadon, King of Opar and Blood of Ancient Opar—are particularly stunning and define, respectively, Opar and its adjoining valley in my mind. In fact, the artwork inspired scenes that I incorporated into the narrative of both novellas. Bob, of course, also painted a striking, apocalyptic panorama of Khokarsa, the larger empire of which Opar is a part, details of which grace the covers of the Restored Edition of Flight to Opar and The Song of Kwasin.

I had a tremendous amount of fun attending FarmerCon X/PulpFest 2015 in Columbus, Ohio last month! I started out my trip on August 4, flying out Atlanta, Georgia and heading over to Meteor House headquarters, where I wore out my hand signing books. Then, on Tuesday the 8th, we were off in a van for Columbus to reunite with friends and set up the Meteor House tables at the Hyatt. Both Hadon, King of Opar and the new hardcover edition of Exiles of Kho debuted at the convention, as did the new Restored Edition of Philip José Farmer’s Flight to Opar (a book I am extremely proud to have edited). It was gratifying to see the stacks of these titles shrink, be replenished, and then shrink again in an ongoing cycle over the weekend! The con went by in a merry blur, with author readings, fascinating panels on sundry pulp topics, the FarmerCon and PulpFest dinners, and much late-night mingling while around us whirled the spectacle of an anime convention that was going on at the same hotel.

Without further ado, here are some photos from my trip and the convention.

Signing books at Meteor House headquarters.

Booooooks!

Banner outside the PulpFest dealers room.

With Meteor House publisher Michael Croteau (right).

The new signed limited edition hardcover of EXILES OF KHO is almost sold out!

Hadon, King of Opar, the limited edition hardcover of Exiles of Kho, and the Restored Edition of Philip José Farmer’s Flight to Opar will all debut at PulpFest 2015/FarmerCon X in Columbus, Ohio on August 13–16. I’ll be on hand to sign the books and will be hanging out at the Meteor House table in the Dealers Hall if you’d like to stop by and chat. The books should all begin shipping to customers shortly after PulpFest.

I’d like to take a moment to give a Brobdingnagian THANK YOU everyone who preordered the books and in so doing made them a reality. I am also especially grateful to the good folks at Meteor House and the interested parties who gave their blessing for new works set in Ancient Opar to be published.

Regarding the Restored Edition of Philip José Farmer’s novel Flight to Opar that I’m editing for Meteor House, my preface will go into detail about the process of how and why the text was restored and show that the excised portions were not a matter of the original copyeditor “trimming unnecessary fat” from the original manuscript. I am not “undoing” the many thousands of generally quite sharp and beneficial line edits made by the copyeditor of the 1976 DAW Books edition. What I’m doing is restoring meaningful passages that were cut to meet an arbitrary page count for the first edition of the novel. I think Farmer fans are going to love reading the new material, which only enhances an already excellent novel. I know I did!